Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi's Simon Boccanegra opens the 2024/25 Season of the Rome Opera Theater on November 27th. The show, directed by the great English director Richard Jones, sees the musical director of the Capitolina Foundation Michele Mariotti on the podium.

The opera, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, is based on the drama entitled Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez. The premiere took place in 1857 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice without success; over twenty years later Verdi decided to rework completely the score: the changes to the libretto were made by Arrigo Boito, the future librettist of Otello and Falstaff; the new and definitive version was then staged with success in 1881 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

The story is set in Genoa in 1339. The plebeian Simon Boccanegra loves Maria and has a daughter with her named Amelia, but the woman dies and the little girl disappears; Simone was then elected doge thanks to the maneuvers of the commoner Paolo Albiani. Simone's daughter reappears twenty-five years later, loved by the patrician Gabriele Adorno: the doge would like to marry her to Paolo, but when he realizes the woman's identity he cancels the wedding; Paolo Albiani meanwhile meditates revenge, studying Amelia's kidnapping. Meanwhile Adorno is arrested and Paolo leads him to believe in an impure bond between Amelia and her father; in the meantime Simon Boccanegra is poisoned by Paolo, but has time to recognize Adorno's innocence and bless the latter's marriage to his daughter. Paolo banished from Genoa, Gabriele Adorno is appointed new doge of Venice.
At the centre of the plot therefore, we find political intrigues and class clashes, unresolved passions and struggles for power. The story of the first doge of Genoa, Simon Boccanegra, becomes for Verdi a drama about the crisis of a political system and above all, the torment of a man divided between the love for his daughter and the fulfillment of his institutional duties. A tragedy in which the sea, which frames the work, represents both the backdrop of a Genoa in political turmoil and the metaphorical reflection of the restless souls of the protagonists.

Among the protagonists of the opera we remember: Luca Salsi in the role of Simon Boccanegra, Eleonora Buratto in the role of Maria Boccanegra, Michele Pertusi in the part of the noble Jacopo Fiesco, Stefan Pop in the role of Gabriele Adorno, Gevorg Hakobyan as Paolo Albiani; Orchestra and Chorus of the Rome Opera Theater.